On the recordJanuary 19, 2022
Thank you, Senator Wyden. I want to thank you. Oregon was the first to use vote-by-mail for a Federal election. Although, I think Senator Padilla, a great member of the Rules Committee from California, would tell you, in fact, that California and Washington first allowed any voter to request a mail-in ballot in the 1970s. But since then, what has happened? Utah, considered a red State by all accounts has mail-in balloting for nearly all of their voters. We have seen this across the country. Today, 34 States allow any voter to request a mail-in ballot. During the pandemic, 45 States actually allowed this to happen without an excuse. What happened during the pandemic is that we saw 11 States that didn't typically allow all voters to request a mail-in ballot do so. Sadly, 10 of them have already started rolling this back for the next election. We know that this is a really safe and good way to vote, whether there is a pandemic or there isn't a pandemic. And the key is voters got used to it, they liked it, and attempts to roll this back and to make it harder to vote are the wrong way to go for our country. And, instead, we should be assuring everyone that regardless of their ZIP Code, regardless of their State, they should be able to vote by mail. Thank you for the question.
